Yes. Whilst you can embed images as MIME attachments (or data:// uri trickery and the like), the vast majority are <img> tags referencing external http:// http:

Yes. Whilst you can embed images as MIME attachments (or data:// uri trickery and the like), the vast majority are <img> tags referencing external http:// http:// uris. A message with remote image references is not a complete document, and won't render correctly unless those references can be followed. Google are instead fetching and caching those remote references, then serving them indirectly to you. As comparison, Firefox has a 'save page' function which distinguishes between 'html only' (akin to the mail message), and 'complete', which would include all images, stylesheets, external js files, etc.